Why We Need S 2917 and HR 5417

S 2917 and HR 5417 are Senate and House bills to protect Internet neutrality.


Below is a partial quote from a letter I recieved from Meg Whitman, President and CEO of eBay,

Right now, the telephone and cable companies in control of Internet access are trying to use their enormous political muscle to dramatically change the Internet. It might be hard to believe, but lawmakers in Washington are seriously debating whether consumers should be free to use the Internet as they want in the future.

The phone and cable companies now control more than 95% of all Internet access. These large corporations are spending millions of dollars to promote legislation that would divide the Internet into a two-tiered system.

The top tier would be a "Pay-to-Play" high-speed toll-road restricted to only the largest companies that can afford to pay high fees for preferential access to the Net.

The bottom tier -- the slow lane -- would be what is left for everyone else. If the fast lane is the information "super-highway," the slow lane will operate more like a dirt road.

Today's Internet is an incredible open marketplace for goods, services, information and ideas. We can't give that up. A two lane system will restrict innovation because start-ups and small companies -- the companies that can't afford the high fees -- will be unable to succeed, and we'll lose out on the jobs, creativity and inspiration that come with them.

I believe strongly in Internet neutrality and urge your support of these two bills.

Regrettably, without network neutrality legislation, the Internet is likely to become a two-tiered system - where those who can pay a tax to have access to consumers will have access to a fast lane and the rest will crawl along in the slow lane. Innovation on the Internet will suffer, consumer choices will decrease, and entrepreneurship will diminish.

As a conservative and Republican, I am a huge supporter of entrepreneurship, without it this country would not be what it is today.

You can send a letter to your Senator and Representative by using this service or you can copy and paste their sample letters and mail them a hard copy.

Either way, I urge you to do it today, after all, where would our blogs be placed on a two-tier system? Most assuradly on the dirt road, not the super highway.

A Memorial Day Tribute To Our Troops

The time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.

To-day, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.

A stiller town indeed. I borrow the above words of A E Houseman not to eulogize an athlete who has died before his time, but rather to honor the sons and daughters, fathers and mothers of our military who have sacrificed their lives in the cause of freedom for this country and the world.

As we go about our daily lives during this Memorial Day weekend, attending parades and fireworks displays, or just enjoying an extra day off with our families, let us take a few moments to reflect on the freedoms we so enjoy.

For, although our founding fathers expressed the belief that our freedoms are inalienable rights, granted us from God, those freedoms have been protected, and guaranteed by the blood of our military throughout our history. The following piece has circulated on the internet for some time. It is particularly poignant in this time of war.

It is the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us the freedom of the press.It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us the freedom of speech.It is the soldier, not the campus organizer, who gives us the freedom to demonstrate.

It is the soldier who salutes the flag, who serves beneath the flag, and whose coffin is draped by the flag, who allows the protester to burn the flag."—Father Dennis Edward O'Brien, Sergeant, US Marine Corps

Writer much more talented than I have pointed out that Freedom is not, in fact, free. Freedom, in order to blossom upon an infertile soil, takes from time to time the shedding of blood. It is the blood of the US Military, on battlefields near and far that has planted the seeds of freedom and democracy that bloom from time to time.

This weekend, as we plant American flags on the graves of our fallen heroes, let us hope that those seeds already planted throughout the world will begin to germinate and spread, that future generations will find more to celebrate, and less to grieve, on this, our most noble of Holidays.

May God Bless the United States, and all of our Military, wherever they be…guarding freedom in this world.

David Hinz

Let me share with you these three inspirational webpages. Be sure to turn your speakers up:
God Bless America sung by Celine Dion
Liberty-An Anthem for a free World
If I Die Before You Wake sung by Dustin Evans

China Will Rule The World This Century

Many fear a war with Iran will cause a global conflict of epic proportions and I am the head cheerleader of that line of reasoning. However, as I look at the world and what is going on in it, that may be just what China wants.

Think about this:

• We fund China by investing enormous amounts of capital in their country. In fact, they are the number 1 country for attracting capital, it used to be the United States.
• They take the money they make from investments by the west and feed it through back channels and directly to the worlds bad boys, like Iran. Read this story about feed stock for Iran's reactors.
• Iran funds and trains terrorists as well has becoming the biggest and loudest bully on the block. The list of groups they help is long indeed, but includes Hezbollah, Hamas and Al Qaeda. These groups alone have ongoing conflicts associated with their name, Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel, Lebanon and more.
• We fight terrorism around the world. Are we funding our own demise? I think we might be.

Many are afraid of a shooting war with China, but I see it another way. There will never be a shooting war with China, why would they risk a shooting war with anyone, nor would they invade Taiwan, it's all a smoke screen. Why would the risk have a war that would damage all the new infrastructure that they are putting into place?

It is much easier to rattle your saber once in a while to look like a warlord, while working behind the scenes helping others accomplish your goals for you.

Having established themselves as a major manufacturing entity, they would be the first and most probably only reliable source left to use when the rebuilding begins at the end of an epic global conflict.

They constantly stick their nose into seemingly unconnected chaos, like the one in Sudan. Off we run, ready to protect the innocent from the ravages of communism, when they have no real interest there, save the oil.

They continue to use their puppet state of North Korea to help with the dirty work, like building underground hardened facilities in Iran and to transfer technology to them for their growing Nuclear capabilities, including the miniaturization for a weapon for delivery via a missile system.

Behind every evil doing in the world, including the goings on in South America, the name China always comes up somewhere along the way, connected to the oil, or the money or the technology or all of them.

What a brilliant plan:

• Make yourself the number one go to guy
• Help cause a global conflict, making sure there is plausible deniability with each action, that will destroy or exhaust the worlds resources
• Sell the world the goods it needs to rebuild when the war is over

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the old "Dukes of Hazard" shuck and jive, oriental style.

In the end, China will be the major economic power in the world and the United States will be left to blame.

Can The United Nations Be Reformed?

Please excuse me for revisiting this subject again, but reader comment on my other article prompted more thought on this issue.

The United Nations and all its agencies and funds spend about $20 billion each year, or about $3 for each of the world's inhabitants. This is a very small sum compared to most government budgets and it is just a tiny fraction of the world's military spending.

As much as we will not like to admit it, since the United States came out of its self-imposed isolationism policy preceding WW II, the US has become the policeman of the world. You cannot point to a single success of the UN that did not first and foremost include American:
1.Troops
2.Pressure and involvement
3.Money!
Not necessarily in that order...

Whenever the United Nations has actually accomplished anything, or been successful in its mission, it has always been because of US pressure and involvement. Without US forces and/or support, the UN has done nothing!

Scandal after inept scandal has followed the UN from its inception. Relief efforts spend billions of dollars each year, usually lining the pockets of petty dictators and tyrants in the countries the UN is trying to help, while the people continue to starve. OR worse, the UN steps in and makes the situation worse by adding to the oppression and misery. (see Darfur, Somolia, Congo, Rwanda, Bosnia, etc.) Even wikipedia.org hardly a bastion of conservatism acknowledges this fact. As just one example...

Failure to successfully deliver food to starving people in Somalia; the food was instead usually seized by local warlords. A the U.S./UN attempt to apprehend the warlords seizing these shipments resulted in the 1993 Battle of Mogadishu.

Most often the complaint we hear from the UN and the left in this country is that the US is not spending enough to help the rest of the world, and of course, specifically supporting the United Nations. This point does not even begin to examine the issue of US Foreign Aid, a topic for another rant on another forum!

The House measure is a reduction of the Clinton administration's original request of $738 million. That request earmarked $250 million for Africa but strong sentiment among the Republican leadership was against any peacekeeping funds for Africa. At one point during the appropriations discussion, Congressman Harold Rogers - who
chairs the key House Approriations subcommitee: Commerce, Justice, State, the Judiciary and Related Agencies - is reported to have said of Africa, "There is no peace to keep."

The groups are denouncing Bush's plan to contribute only $200 million contribution towards the new UN AIDS Global Fund-- a fund which, according to Harvard economist Jeffrey Sachs and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, requires 7 to 10 BILLION dollars to confront the escalating global AIDS crisis. International relief organizations had called on the US to contribute about $2 billion to the fund.

Just write the checks. Don't ask us how the money is spent, that is not your problem.

On the subject of Iran and its nuclear ambitions, another strongpoint for UN impotence, the US, having tried to allow the UN to handle the issue. Now, confronted with that impotence, the US is weighing its options in handling the situation by itself, or with allies.
Although this woman has rather strong reservations against American involvement in Iran, her comments about Iran and its relationship with the UN are telling. Iran I might add now sits on the UN Human Rights Council.

As a member of the United Nations, the Iranian government is obliged to follow rules an regulations created based on the international human rights law. ......Therefore, Iran's indifference to principles of international human rights, and the repeated violations committed in the legislative and judiciary spheres, foretells the facts that internal laws requiring enforcement are not respected. Therefore, from the standpoint of a citizen, this government is a "law breaker" and thus, cannot order its citizens to "abide by the law."

The long and short answer to the question posed in the heading is NO! The UN, in its present form cannot be reformed.

In an article outlining the need and prospects for reform the Global Policy Forum lays out a platform for reform, yet in their very statements and conclusions, it becomes clear why reform is impossible.

Critics of the Council made seven demands - that the Council be: (1)more representative, (2)more accountable, (3)more legitimate, (4)more democratic, (5)more transparent, (6)more effective and (7)more fair and even-handed (no double standards).

Such demands seem reasonable, but they are not easily compatible.Let us take those seven demands one at a time:

1. More representative: Representative of what? The world, of which two-thirds of the countries are ruled by dictators and tyrants? Of democracies, a small minority of the world population, but the only true voices of the people? If the council represents free peoples, two-thirds of the world is excluded, the two-thirds, I might add that are going to ignore the dictates of the people anyway. If the council represents the "world" then the free peoples are overruled by the tyrants, a situation not unlike the status quo in the UN today.
2. More accountable: Again, accountable to who? As we have seen through scandal after scandal within the United Nations, investigations are merely swept under the rug. The inmates are running the asylum, so who do we account to, the democracies or the tyrants? The tyrants don't care, as long as they get their cut...the democracies don't count...(see 1. above)
3. More legitimate: Great sentiment, legitimacy is a great thing. Why, based upon its seat as a permanent member of the Security Council, The Peoples Republic of China is legitimate. So are, by their seats on the Human Right Council Iran and Cuba. (See 1. above) This horse is dead, no need to beat it any more!
4. More democratic: Wow! Who could disagree with that sentiment? Democracy is a great thing. Of course a Representative Republic is better. Democracy is mob rule, and the UN is certainly a mob. The democratic elections in the Palestinian state certainly demonstrate the folly of this notion. Again, the idea of subjugating the true democracies of the world to the wishes and aims of the tyrants who outnumber them, is an anathema to world peace and stability. (See 1. above)
5. More transparent: Ah, finally an idea I can get my arms around and embrace. Every action of the United Nations should be transparent. Every proposal and resolution should be examined in the cold hard light of day, with full understanding of who is behind it, and who benefits from it. Where is the money coming from, where it is going, and who is spending it. It isn't going to happen! Which is probably why I support the idea!
6. More effective: Well, Duhhhh! (See 1. above)
7. More fair and even handed: Ok, more fair to whom? Israel, who has been fighting for its life since 1948 and has been condemned by the UN innumerable times for doing so? Darfur, where the people would just like to be able to live in their own homes without being hacked to death in the night, or raped and beaten by "peacekeepers?" Or, possibly the people of Tibet, who have been occupied by China since 1959, with the tacit approval of the United Nations.

In conclusioon, I would reluctantly have to say that the United States, IS the policeman of the world. This is to say, that if any substantive redress of any action in the world community is going to take place, it will be the United States and its allies, NOT the United Nations that will actually solve the problem.

To paraphrase an old saying; If you are not part of the solution...You are probably from the UN!

A Nuclear Iran Looms Closer!

While the United States immerses itself in a self-flagellating debate on illegal immigration across its southern border, and the UN dithers about an uneasy and perilous peace in Darfur, while ignoring the looming crisis of Iran, the president of Iran pulls the world ever closer to the brink.

Today, WorldNewDaily.com has an article detailing how Mahmoud Ahmadinejad views the world, and his role in bringing about the end of times.

Iranian President Mahmoud's Ahmadinejad's mystical pre-occupation with the coming of a Shiite Islamic messiah figure – the Mahdi – is raising concerns that a nuclear-armed Islamic Republic could trigger the kind of global conflagration he envisions will set the stage for the end of the world.

We ignore Ahmadinejad at our own peril. As we have often detailed here, Ahmadinejad sees himself as a messianic figure, ushering in the return of the 12th Imam. This mystical figure will, according to Islamic belief, return to earth bringing about a final struggle ending in an Islamic caliphate across the entire world.

Ahmadinejad and others in Iran are deadly serious about the imminent return of the 12th imam, who will prompt a global battle between good and evil (with striking parallels to biblical accounts of "Armageddon").

An institute set up in 2004 for the study and dissemination of information about the Mahdi now has a staff of 160 and influence in the schools and children's magazines.

In Iran, theologians say endtimes beliefs appeal to one-fifth of the population. And the Jamkaran mosque east of Qom, 60 miles south of Tehran, is where the link between devotees and the Mahdi is closest.

Some point to divisions within Islam itself as a safety valve against this type of end of time scenario. But this article suggests our concerns on the subject are well founded.

Over the past few decades, expectation of the Mahdi has spilled over into Sunni doctrine. The Shi'ites believe him to be the returning 12th Imam, the Sunnis think he will be a restorer of the Caliphate. But both believe he will lead an army which will kill all the infidel Westerners, will convert the pliant Westerners, and will govern the world in a shar'ia utopia for an era before Allah wraps things up on Judgment Day.

Add to that the fact that al Qaida is predominantly made up of Wahabi, a breakaway sect that believes that both the Sunni and Shia are too secular, and will do anything to attack the infidels, and it does not bode well for the West. Wahabi doctrine is not above using both Sunni and Shia to accomplish their aims, then eliminating them after their usefulness is over, since, in their eyes, both sects are infidels as well.

Ahmadinejad truly sees himself as a messianic figure. Following his speech to the UN General Assembly last year he said this;

Ahmadinejad said that someone present at the UN told him that a light surrounded him while he was delivering his speech to the General Assembly. The Iranian president added that he also sensed it. "He said when you began with the words 'in the name of God,' I saw that you became surrounded by a light until the end [of the speech]," Ahmadinejad appears to say in the video. "I felt it myself, too. I felt that all of a sudden the atmosphere changed there, and for 27-28 minutes all the leaders did not blink."

By his words and actions, it is clear that Ahmadinejad believes that the return of the 12th Imam and the end of days is close at hand. It is also important to note that although Europe and Russia have offered Iran low-grade uranium enrichment for peaceful energy use, Ahmadinejad has dismissed their proposals out of hand. In addition, as reported here Iran has successfully enriched uranium.

Iran has successfully enriched uranium for the first time, a landmark in its quest to develop nuclear fuel, hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Tuesday. He insisted, however, that his country does not aim to develop nuclear weapons.

While this enrichment of Uranium has not apporached weapons grade, traces of weapons grade Uranium have been found in Iran. Supporters claim these traces come from the equipment purchased from Pakistan.

Still, they said, further analysis could show that the traces match others established to have come from abroad. The International Atomic Energy Agency determined earlier traces of weapons-grade uranium were imported on equipment from Pakistan that Iran bought on the black market during nearly two decades of clandestine activity discovered just over three years ago.

However, this link makes it clear that the Iranians have been lying about their program all along.

However, those traces were found at their civilian research facility, where the Iranians claimed all the equipment from the AQ Khan network had been installed. Finding the enriched uranium at a military facility would call the earlier explanation into question as well as generate questions about why the Iranian military has involved itself in what Teheran purports to be a civilian use of nuclear technology.

Whatever the explanation, the implication is crystal clear: the Iranians have weapons-grade uranium somewhere. The gap between the enrichment level of energy-production and weapons-grade material (5% vs 90%+) is so wide that there is no other explanation for the possession of the latter.

Meanwhile, he now possesses missiles capable of carrying nuclear weapons anywhere in the Mideast. Soon, he will have missiles with a 5000 km range, easily putting all of Europe within his sights.

While the immigration issue is of importance to the security of our nation, we dare not take our eye off Iran, lest we wake up one day to find it too late!

Redneck Solution to Iraq - On the Lighter Side

It seems the Penatgon has come up with an easy solution to the terrorists in Iraq.

They will form an all Redneck Volunteer unit and arm them with only the following facts:

1. The season opened today.
2. There is no limit.
3. They taste just like chicken.
4. They don't like beer, pick-up trucks or Jesus.
5. They are directly resposible for the death of Dale Ernhart.

Inside sources say the insurgency problem will be cleared up by the end of the month.